Chapter One: No job... No home... No boyfriend... No life... What would you do? What does Aurora do? Read chapter two...
Callie
Chapter Two
I'm a survivor. I found an apartment. Rusty brown water poured out of the kitchen faucet, cracked tile floor led to an orange shag carpet, and mold grew on the sliding glass door in the bathroom. Nothing like Ru's dream apartment but it was all I could afford.
The lump of bills hidden away in a compartment in one of the suitcases would just keep getting smaller. The race was on. What would happen first? Would I find a job or end up on the street begging for coins?
What should a person with a bleak future and meager finances do? I took my worried self shopping. Smart, eh?
I found my personal paradise--a bookstore. Bells chimed as I pushed open the door. I left the sunny day and became engulfed in gray fog. Giant towers of books surrounded me. Among them I was drawn like a magnet to On Writing by Stephen King, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, The Elements of Style by Strunk and White, The Art and Craft of Storytelling by Nancy Lamb, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fearby Elizabeth Gilbert, The Artist Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity and The Right to Write by Julia Cameron. My arms weighed down with books I searched for the cash register. Once found, I unloaded the pile with a thud. The guy behind the counter eyed me like some kind of exotic insect. We are alone and his attention unnerved me--slightly.
"This will help," he said in a thick accent, waving a hand over the books. "But you must have..."
Against my better judgment, I followed him down narrow aisles and past towering stacks of books. I'd never felt claustrophobic, but I felt it then. Curiosity was stronger. I needed to know what hidden treasure he would unearth.
He moved with urgency like a rabbit scampering down underground tunnels to... He stopped in front of a collection of necklaces pinned to a corkboard. He removed and, after wiping off a thick layer of dust, handed it to me, saying, "You must have this."
The tarnished pendant bore an engraving of two snakes twisted around a pin. I knew that image. It had been on some of the papers I'd sorted through after my mother's death. She'd been a nurse. "I'm not a nurse or a doctor," I told him, handing the necklace back.
He forced my hand into a tight fist around the necklace. He said something like 'for-row'.
Huh...?
One thing was clear--refusing wasn't an option. I paid for the books but he wouldn't take a cent for the necklace.
Chapter Three
Are you following me?
